This week on New Mexico in Focus, Gene Grant and The Line Opinion Panel react to Albuquerque Mayor Tim Keller’s announcement that the city's police force will be smaller than promised.
Grant asks our panelists whether we should be focused on the number of officers, or how they’re being used. Then, Grant and the panel dissect the Santa Fe District Attorney’s decision to withdraw from the deadly Rust film set shooting case.
Two new special prosecutors have been appointed after the first one stepped down last month. The panel reflects on that decision and looks ahead to the case’s preliminary hearing scheduled for May 3.
The continued oil boom in the Permian Basin is reflected in the state’s budget. But it also affects the climate, local communities, and the landscape. Not only that, but many companies pollute beyond what regulations allow, with few repercussions. Jerry Redfern, a reporter with Capital & Main, talks about the role his reporting played in fines levied against two Texas companies — and about New Mexico’s disproportionate contributions to the planet’s warming climate.
Every year on the second week of April, the golf world turns its attention to Augusta National Golf Club in Georgia — it’s time for the Masters Tournament, one of the sport’s four annual major championships. In 2003, a concussion bomb fell on the carefully controlled environment in the form of New Mexico’s Marth Burk, a longtime champion for women’s pay equity and a host of other issues.
Burk had set her sights on Augusta’s exclusionary membership policies and on the massive pay gaps in companies led by some of the club’s members and television sponsors. Burk’s protest is now the stuff of legend. NMPBS Executive Producer Jeff Proctor caught up with Burk for a chat — on Masters week, no less — about what’s changed and what hasn’t in the two decades since her protest.
One year after Russia invaded Ukraine, a group of Ukrainian citizens in New Mexico is pushing even harder to rally support for their home country. Nataliya Pavlenko-Edleman and Larysa Castillo lead the organization, Ukrainian Americans of New Mexico. Senior Producer Lou DiVizio sits down with them to ask about the emotional burdens of the past year, and the role women have played in the war effort, both in Ukraine and in New Mexico.
New Mexico in Focus airs on NMPBS 5.1 (KNME HD) Friday, April 7 at 7 p.m. and Sunday, April 9 at 7 a.m., and streaming on the PBS video app.
Host
Gene Grant
The Line Opinion Panel
T.J. Trout, radio host, KKOB
Laura Sanchez, attorney
H. Diane Snyder, former NM State Senator
NMiF Segments
Permian Development Fuels Climate Change
Correspondent
Laura Paskus
Guest
Jerry Redfern, reporter, Capital & Main
Martha Burk and Augusta National, 20 Years Later
Correspondent
Jeff Proctor
Guest
Martha Burk, Author, Host of the Podcast ‘Equal Time with Martha Burk’
Ukrainian Americans of New Mexico Reflect on Ongoing Invasion, More Than One Year Later
Correspondent
Lou DiVizio
Guests
Nataliya Pavlenko-Edleman, president, Ukrainian Americans of New Mexico
Larysa Castillo, vice president, Ukrainian Americans of New Mexico
New Mexico in Focus is the New Mexico PBS prime-time news magazine show covering the events, issues, and people that are shaping life in New Mexico and the Southwest. NMiF takes a multi-layered look at social, political, economic health, education, and art issues, and explores them in-depth with a critical eye to give them context beyond the "news of the moment."
New Mexico in Focus Senior Producer for Public Affairs is Lou DiVizio. "Our Land" Senior Producer is Laura Paskus. Co-producer of New Mexico in Focus is Kathy Wimmer. Funding for New Mexico in Focus is provided by the McCune Charitable Foundation and Viewers Like You.
Funding for the Your New Mexico Government Project comes from the Thornburg Foundation and New Mexico Local News Fund.
Funding for Our Land: New Mexico’s Environmental Past, Present & Future, is provided in part by the Neeper Natural History Programming Fund for KNME-TV.
